Hello!
I am trying to capture audio from old cassette tapes (audio captured of my band typically from our shows’ sound boards). Years ago I bought a Grace TAPE2USBII (GDI-T2USB200) deck which has line-out and USB out. I opened it for the first time today.
I set it as the audio input for my Mac Studio. Sonoma (shows up as USB Audio Controller), set the input volume to a bit lower than 50%, and in Audacity (which I have never used before to capture source audio like this), in Audio Settings I have selected USB Audio Controller as the recording device, with 2 channels.
I tested out a tape and the result is uploaded here, but it is not good. It sounds like the audio is jumping around (jittery?), speeding up, etc… The tape does not sound like this in reality and I know this because the Grace device has a small playback speaker to monitor what it sounds like and it sounds normal, no jittery sound.
I tested on my 16" M1 Macbook Pro with a different tape, but the result is about the same (except from an actual good band haha), here is a clip: (oops I can only include one upload)
I’ve never used Audacity before and I’m not sure where to start looking to solve this.
I’m not sure whether it’s the Grace just not working properly, if I need some plugin to make it work right with Audacity. I’m hoping it’s an easy fix and that I’m dumb for not finding it. What could it be? Is there another Mac audio recording app I could use to see if it’s the hardware alone, or the hardware not playing right with Audacity? What would you recommend? I’m really keen to digitize these old recordings before the tapes disintigrate.